Where the City Meets the Sky
by lavalavakrstn
Summary: "Indra was there when Costia was taken, and Lexa was unable to go looking for her. She'll be damned if she makes that same mistake again."
1. Most Days Stay the Sole Same

She stumbles slightly, bracing herself against the tree she almost fell face first into.

_It's these damn boots, _she thinks, _I've been walking for too long._

But she knows it's not the boots or even the mass distance she managed to put between her and Camp Jaha today. It's Monty's moonshine that she found while she was checking the dropship one last time for supplies.

Clarke thinks maybe it's the best thing she could have hoped to find. She has no need for food, her appetite ripped away every time she thinks about all of those charred bodies locked away in the mountain for the rest of eternity…

She leans to the side and vomits, and this time she knows it's not from the alcohol.

It's the knowledge of what she's done. And she can't even begin to ask for forgiveness because everyone who she would ask, anyone whose forgiveness even matters, she torched when her and Bellamy pulled that lever.

Clarke straightens to stand again, wipes her mouth, and makes a tighter fist around the bottle of liquor she's holding. She brings it to her lips and finishes it off in one swig. She hisses as the strong liquid burns its way down her throat, but she's thankful for it because at least she still feels _something_.

"Yu gonplei ste odon," she murmurs and then she lets the bottle fall unceremoniously from her hands and keeps walking.

Clarke doesn't really know where she's going, but she knows her destination. She knows to keep the sun behind her because she needs to head west. How far west she doesn't know.

She digs another bottle of moonshine out of her pack and pulls the cork out with her teeth. She spits it onto the ground, not caring where it lands because she doesn't need it anymore. She plans on finishing this bottle off too.

Clarke knows she's being sloppy. She isn't watching where she steps, and she's breaking just about every twig and branch that gets into her path on her trek through the forest. She just can't bring herself to give a fuck. She doesn't care if anyone can follow her, find her.

She isn't afraid of dying anymore.

_I probably fucking deserve it._

And that's when the first arrow hits her in the shoulder.

She looks down at her right shoulder and notices she can see the feathers at the end of the arrow sticking out in stark contrast to her black jacket. Whoever shot her is in front of her.

Clarke strains her eyes against the lush, green cloak of the forest, trying to find her assailant. Before she wanted to kiss Monty for how strong he made his moonshine, now she is desperately wishing he had skimped a little on this particular batch.

She catches a slight movement out of her corner of her eye and by the time she can comprehend where the shooter is, another arrow is sailing her way. It slices its way through the skin above her right knee, about halfway up her thigh, and her leg gives out.

She falls to the ground, arms doing nothing to brace her fall. Her face kisses the forest floor, _hard_, and it's in this moment that Clarke decides karma truly does exist.

_Dante was right. We all have to atone for our sins._

The pain is intense, and real, and Clarke does nothing but accept it. She has no fight left. That's why when she hears the footsteps approaching her, her attempt to push herself off the ground is meager at best. She knows she looks just about at pathetic as she feels.

She takes a boot to the ribs before everything goes dark.

* * *

She can't stop pacing back and forth. Back and forth. She knows how annoying this must be for Indra to watch, but she can't stand still. She can't take the risk of letting her thoughts catch up to her.

This is why it's been over an hour, and Lexa still hasn't sat down at the table with the rest of her war council.

"Commander, you need not worry about the girl. She has shown her strength in taking down the Mountain Men. She will be fine in her travels." It's Indra now who tries to cease Lexa's concern.

_Am I making it that obvious?_

"I do not worry for Clarke. I only worry for our men who were turned rabid by the mountain."

It feels so good to even form her name in her mouth. The way Lexa's tongue rolls from the back of her throat to the front of her teeth until the word is nothing more but a puff of air against her lips on its way out.

_Clarke._

"Abby agreed to help revive the men that she could. They are in good hands with the Skai doctor."

Lexa sighs and rubs her hand across eyes. She's so tired, and still pacing, and they aren't listening to her.

"Yes, and we've been over this. How long do you think this treaty will hold while Clarke is away?"

She couldn't bring herself to say that Clarke was… gone. She couldn't be gone. She was just away, somewhere, on her own. In the fucking forest.

Lexa starts to pace a little faster.

She needs a way to make her war council back her on this. Sure, she could tell them to go scour the woods, flip over every fallen tree and search in the caves behind every damn waterfall, and they would. She is the Commander. She is _Heda._ Which is exactly why she needs a plan that doesn't make her look like an obsessive, love-sick teenager.

_I'm not in love, I'm just concerned._

That is like her fucking mantra these days.

"Kane is their voice of reason now. Their people trust him, and our people accept the words he speaks."

"And still Kane is not Clarke." For the first time all night, Lexa stills and when she puts her hands down on the table, it's with a little too much force as she says these words, a little too much emotion seeping into her sentence. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath in through her nose trying to strengthen her resolve, become in control of her words again. "I just do not wish to start another war when we only just obtained our new-found peace."

And it's completely true. Lexa believes that Clarke is the true leader of the Skaikru. Her people listen to her, respect her. She is their heart, and the only reason they have survived this long on the ground. Not to mention she is one of the only people from the Arc that Lexa's people fully trust. Lexa knows that it will only be a matter of time before the new spark of the alliance would die out in Clarke's absence.

_That's why I have to find her, to protect her- to protect the alliance._

"The Commander is right," Indra addresses the table, "Clarke is who our people truly trust, where their faith lies. If something happens to the Skai girl, this alliance will fail. This is a risk we cannot take."

There is silence for a moment while the other council members churn this idea over in their minds, and then a resounding chorus of "Ay's" breaks out among the table.

"It is settled then. I will lead a search party tomorrow at first light," Lexa gives the command.

Lexa feels only slightly relieved because even though her soldiers have agreed to look for her, Clarke is still out there somewhere, alone, and all Lexa has done is pace all night.

_I should be out there looking for her._

As her council members all stand from the table and make their way out the door of the tent, Indra idles just long enough to catch Lexa's eye. She gives Lexa a knowing look, and Lexa nods her head in silent recognition. She is thankful to Indra for backing her on this decision.

Indra was there when Costia was taken, and Lexa was unable to go looking for her.

She'll be damned if she makes that same mistake again.


	2. Burning Up the Back Wall

I want to say thanks to everyone who has shown interest in this story so far! This is a total Clexa fic, but also there is a pretty big story line going on in this fic too. This might be intense guys...

* * *

She awakes on a cold, damp floor.

The first thing Clarke notices before she ever even opens her eyes is the smell. It's sickly sweet, and thick, and the smell invades her lungs causing her to choke back against it. She's never experienced anything like it. But then again it is slightly familiar.

Her eyes flicker open, and she's immediately thankful for the dimly lit room because she's got the hangover from hell, and Clarke assumes that smashing her face against the forest floor didn't really do much to help her head either.

Her hands move cautiously to explore the arrow wound on her shoulder. To her surprise, it doesn't hurt nearly as much as she thought it would, and she moves her hands down farther to prod gently at the wound on her thigh. Clarke finds her leg in the same condition as her shoulder. Sore, but not overwhelmingly painful.

_What the hell is going on?_

Clarke moves to stand, and her head feels like it weighs a hundred pounds. She feels off kilter, like a toddler trying to balance their head on their shoulders as they test out their legs for the first time. A very hungover and clumsy toddler.

She uses the wall to help her balance as she walks slowly, one foot inching in front of the other. She's limping because now that she has the weight of her body pressing down on her leg it hurts more than it did before, but still not enough to make her cringe as she sloppily fumbles her way along the concrete wall.

She's checking for words, signs. Cracks, creases. Anything to help her figure out where she is and how to get out.

She didn't bring down the mountain just to be held prisoner again.

As Clarke palms her way down the length of the room, she notices light barely seeping through the wall at the far end of the dark area. She moves to it as quickly as her aching state will allow her.

When she gets to the source of the light she finds that it's a window, boarded up by long strips of plywood. Clarke tries to shake the boards against the frame, prying at them until her fingers become sore. They won't budge, the century old nails clinging tightly to the wood at which they were staked through.

_Fuck it._

Clarke moves away from the window, walks back into the middle of the room, and then squares herself up with the window. She takes off towards it- half running, half dragging her body- trying to build up as much momentum as possible before she collides with the boards and the probable glass that awaits lurking behind its wooden shield.

At the last second, she ducks her chin to her chest and throws her left shoulder into the boards with as much force as she can. There's a very loud snapping sound, the boards splintering around where she makes contact with them. And then there's the inevitable cracking of glass as the boards give out into the window behind them.

When her body stops moving forward, Clarke assesses the situation. Luckily she was not cut by the glass.

Clarke bows over and places her palms onto her knees and breathes heavily because really this is just way too much to take in and way too much to handle right after waking up with the worst headache she's ever had- too much right after the_ mountain_.

She tries to remember back to a time when things were easier. A time when she was happy. A time when she felt safe.

Her thoughts go to Wells, and their constant competition of who was the better chess player. Their fathers' constant competition of who had the better soccer team. A time when things were simple and all she had to worry about was training to follow in her mother's footsteps in becoming a surgeon on the Arc.

That was the last time she can remember things being simple, easy. But it's not the last time she was happy.

Clarke remembers exactly the last time she was happy.

It was when she was in Lexa's tent right before they went to battle. Lexa had kissed her, and Clarke wasn't expecting it, but once it started, it sucked the air out of her lungs, out of the entire room. She remembers it felt like when she jumped off the cliff after Anya. When she landed, water invaded her lungs, but when the air came back in she had never felt more alive in her entire life.

That's exactly what kissing Lexa was like.

_It was like realizing you were alive again, after feeling dead for so long._

If only she had those lips to save her from herself now…

She shakes her head vehemently, and the pain helps to push the thoughts away. Clarke can't think of Lexa right now. Clarke doesn't know if she can think about Lexa ever, at least not until the pain dulls a little.

She was hoping that her walk to Polis would give her enough time to heal so when she saw Lexa, if she saw Lexa, she could speak to her without all the harsh words she currently had circling around in her mind.

Clarke also needed to be able to see her without throwing her arms around the girl, sobbing into her neck, and begging her to make all the pain go away anyway Lexa was willing to.

After one more deep inhale of air, Clarke is ready to inspect her damage on the window.

She has broken through the window enough for a single streak of sunlight to come dancing into the room. As Clarke starts to work on wedging the boards apart once more, she becomes aware again of that sweet scent she smelled just upon waking. It was oddly familiar, though she couldn't place exactly where she's come in contact with it before.

The wood planks are giving in this time around, and Clarke is able to make an opening large enough for her body to fit through with little struggle from her part. She slides through the window and lands on her back in the middle of a large field.

The field is surrounded by a makeshift fence, and it reminds Clarke of the one they built when they first arrived on the ground to protect the dropship. The fence seemed to be protecting hundreds of plants from the outside world.

The plants were tall, some of them towering a few feet above Clarke's head. Most of them were a deep green and shaped like a hand with the five fingers splayed out reaching ominously towards her. They reminded her of the marijuana plants they grew on the Arc to help ease the pain of patients with cancer that were in their final stages.

These plants were significantly larger though, and while they shared similar characteristics with the marijuana plants, Clarke knew that's not what they were. Marijuana didn't smell like this.

Now that she was out in the open field, the smell was overwhelming. So sweet it almost made her sick, but it was somehow intoxicating.

The plants had prickly, cactus like flowers protruding out from the palms of their "hands." The flowers were bright red, and she hadn't seen anything as bright and vibrant red in her time on Earth thus far. Except for all the blood…

Clarke moves closer to the plants, noticing that some of the flower pods were beginning to crack open, exposing the most unique looking brown seeds inside. The seeds were large, resembling beans, and they had very distinct patterns etched into the surface of them. Clarke knows she's seen these before, but where?

She bends over to pick up one of the seeds to get a better look at it, and right as her fingers are about to brush it, there comes a voice from behind her.

"I wouldn't touch those if I were you."

Clarke spins around abruptly, guarded, her eyes falling on the person who had spoken to her. It was a woman, tall and beautiful, with hair that was darker than the night sky, even as the sunlight reflected off of it. Clarke can't help but notice her eyes were just as dark.

The woman takes a few strides in Clarke's direction, almost sauntering, sweeping her fingers gently across the tops of the plants leaves as she walks. Clarke notices she's wearing thick gloves, and a necklace that seems slightly too large to be wearing around her neck. It's silver and looks like a globe, speckled with tiny holes all over it.

When she's only a few feet away, Clarke can't decide whether she wants to back up from the woman's advancing figure or plant her feet and stand her ground. She honestly can't decide anything at the moment. She can't think straight. Her body is humming, vibrating almost, and she feels slightly drunk. Except it's different than the affects that alcohol usually has on her, she feels lighter. Higher.

_I'm losing control._

Clarke stands still, even as this woman she doesn't know and most likely had something to do with her being shot and held hostage at this strange place is no more than ten feet away from her now. She can't do anything. She feels fuzzy, and lazy, and _happy_. And now the woman is right in front of her, closing the gap between their bodies.

She's close, so close. And Clarke briefly wonders who taught this woman where the boundaries of personal space lie because literally their bodies are almost flush against each other.

"What are you doing to me?" Clarke asks this with a lopsided smile. She begins laughing, and it's bubbly and bright, and all Clarke really wants to do is reach out and run her fingers through the hair of this beautiful woman who is standing so close to her. She lifts her hand towards the woman's face, but she is intercepted midair.

The dark haired woman pulls Clarke in to her chest.

_This is going to happen._

Clarke leans up to try and get more contact, more anything from this mysterious woman. Instead she is met with something hard being pushed against her nose. Clarke realizes it's the woman's necklace.

"Breathe deep and don't stop until I tell you," the woman commands.

Clarke inhales sharply, and as she does, the scent of coffee beans invades her nose, cutting off the sickly sweet smell from all around her. After a few more breaths, she feels the lightness that had been cast over her start to fade, and she realizes she is way too close to this unknown woman. Clarke quickly steps back, ripping the necklace forcefully off of the woman as she does. She knows that once she stops breathing in whatever is inside of the necklace the haze will begin to sink back in.

The woman begins to reach into her pocket for something.

"Don't," Clarke warns her.

She stills for a moment, but then continues to reach for whatever she needs. She must have realized that Clarke is obviously unarmed, and because of her need for the necklace, one-handed. The woman produced another globe just like the one Clarke has and she brings it to her nose and inhales deeply.

"I'm just trying to make sure I stay coherent long enough to answer all of the questions I assume you have." The woman takes another step towards Clarke. "My name is Riva. I'm guessing you'd like to know why I brought you here, Clarke."

It catches Clarke off guard that this woman, this stranger, knows her name.

_She must be a Grounder._

But she didn't look like a Grounder.

Riva had on a pair of skinny jeans with high heeled boots. She was wearing a button down grey shirt, with a black blazer thrown over the top of it. She looked well put together, but her clothes still looked worn. Just like everyone's did from the Arc. And from the Mountain…

"How do you know my name?" Clarke asks.

Riva gives her a smirk, and there's a glint in her eye that's just slightly off. "Oh you're famous now, Clarke. Slayer of the Mountain Men. Right hand woman to the Commander. You've really made quite the impression in your short time on the ground."

"Why did you bring me here?"

Riva lets out a sigh and begins to look around the field. She kneels down to the ground and picks up one of the seeds from the plants. She holds it out to Clarke to examine.

"Do you know what this is?" Riva pinches the seed between her thumb and index finger and holds it right in front of Clarke's face. Clarke studies it harder, trying to remember where she's seen one before. She knows she never came in contact with these plants on the ground. She would have remembered their red flowers. So she had to have seen it while she was still living on the Arc. She doesn't remember it from Earth Skills. She racks her brain for a few moments when it hits her.

Clarke knows where she's seen those plants before. She knows where she's seen those seeds. Her teacher had given a lecture on them in school- in her Earth Wars history class.

"Is that a Castor Bean?" Clarke asks incredulously.

Riva perks up at Clarke's question.

"Very good, Clarke! I had hoped you were as clever as everyone told me you were."

_Told her? Who has this woman been talking to about me?_

Clarke had an infinite number of questions. Why was she here? Who was this woman? Did she know Lexa? She could go on and on. But there was only one thing she was concerned about at the moment. Castor Beans were used to make Ricin, one of the deadliest poisons she'd ever read about in school.

"Who are you going to poison?"

* * *

Thanks for reading! I'm nerdy af so the next chapter will have a more thorough explanation of what those plants actually are.

They aren't your regular Castor Bean plants... ;)

Also for anyone who wants to read a little bit about Castor Beans and Ricin:  
wiki/Castor_oil_plant


End file.
